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Research Biology And Disorder: Can We Learn To Override Enough Of Our Ptsd?

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Because I have recently been most troubled by my hyperarousal, and because I have noted a similar symptom in Autism and ADHD children and adults, I have long hypothesized that a similar neurological disorder is at work. After researching the potential similarity between Autism and PTSD and hypersensititity to stimulation, I did finally find that researach is demonstrating similar brain/trauma responses in lab animals and is being studied as the possible etiology (cause) of the problems in the nervous systems and brains of people with PTSD and Autism, although etiology is not being targeted as much as I would like as this is all newly emerging. The etiology of PTSD and corresponding FLASHBACKS as a major difference in trauma survivors who go on to have PTSD is studied in Right/Left brain traumatic memory storage is discussed on a link to the main site I found here: [DLMURL]http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/39/6/61.1.full[/DLMURL]. To summarize: those who have PTSD do not store the trauma memory verbally on the left/frontal side of the brain. They dissociate more during the truama, and thereby store the information on the right/rear area. This is pre-verbal memory, where non-verbal experience is stored, and such memories in that region are primary visual, and other senses, without verbal components. Thus, Flashbacks are not easily narrated, as the memories lack narration. Those who experience their traumatic memories as mostly narrative are less prone to develop PTSD than those who experience them as experiential/sensory and store them on the right.

The fear/reptillian brain and poly-vagal study by "Stephen W. Porges, Professor and Director of the Brain-Body Center in the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago, explains that the vagus nerve—the primary nerve for the parasympathetic nervous system—has two major branches: an ancient unmyelinated branch that we share with reptiles and a more recently evolved myelinated branch unique to mammals that "is linked to the cranial nerves that control facial expression and vocalization."
Porges's polyvagal theory proposes an automatic-response hierarchy emphasizing that when mammals detect they are in a safe environment, their bodies automatically activate the more recently developed myelinated branch of the vagus nerve that promotes "calm states, to self-soothe and to engage." What Porges calls the social engagement system determines the quality of interpersonal exchanges..." (source: Link Removed)

Thus, if we can narrate and begin to activate the left brain deliberately, can we by pass the right side more?
 
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Thus, if we can narrate and begin to activate the left brain deliberately, can we by pass the right side more?

Maybe, if the personality is a natural extrovert -- where speaking is their primary tool for communication. Don't think this would work for introverts (especially extreme intros who rank above 80%) where speaking isn't a dominant tool. For intros like myself, writing/typing & drawing works much better.

Left brainers (& extroverts) have little trouble expressing themselves in words. Right brainers (& extreme introverts) know & understand what they mean, but often have trouble finding the words to express what is in their head so that everyone else understands. Listen to people give directions.

The left brainer >> "From here, go south 2 miles and turn east on Elm. Go 3 miles and turn west ontoDome Rd."

The right brainer >> "Turn left (pointing left), by the park over there (pointing again). You’ll go by a strip mall and a Sonic. At the next light, turn toward the gas station."

Right brainers back up everything visually using physical markers. If we don’t write it down, we won't remember it. Information is much better processed when we write & draw than if we only hear & see the info. We have to use the right brain to function, or it would be like a right handed person using their left hand for important tasks – they can learn to do it, but would be much slower, clumsier, and the results will be sloppy.

Interesting topic! Thanks for posting. Would like to read more of these kinds of ideas. It makes me feel like people are really thinking about these things and want to help. I have a lot of ideas, but there are not many nerds like me who get excited about engineering theories for mental illness cures beyond medication.

You might enjoy reading the following web page ... here is the site address (take out the spaces)
web-us . com / brain / lrbrain

However, I’ve found that education (for me) has helped me override my reactive behavior – doesn’t ease the body’s nervous & immune system reactions – but by knowing the specific biology & chemistry behind what my body is feeling & expressing (like hives, psoriasis, acne, pealing, chest pain, breathing issues … etc) … (& knowing it is an overreaction & will ease with time) … knowledge is kinda like having a industrial handle to hang on to during a class 4-5 tornado. Knowledge, in my case, is the power I needed to help me through the rough patches. Talking has never helped me.
 
Talk therapy for PTSD has had the effect of burnout on both client and therapist. For everyone here who has mentioned this happening, don't take it too personally. If your therapist says that talk therapy is effective for PTSD, where has she or he been for the last thirty to fifty years? More and more, studies and clinical experience have suggested for most that therapists who use EMDR and other modalities have less burnout with trauma patients than those who rely on talk alone.

However, as Anthony and others have suggested, talking with someone who is a close and trusted friend or intimate partner is healing, and only takes time and emotional investment. But too often, we try to hide our trauma and everything connected with it (which is "us" by the way) from ourselves and our friends and family. We become expert at this; it's hardwired into our biology to fight/flight/freeze around trauma, and with PTSD, that response doesn't just "go away" once it's over. No, we get triggered and the first thing we do is FFF with the emotions and unpacking of the trauma. We don't speak of it, even to ourselves. There is often no verbalizing of it, even internally. It stays trapped as raw emotion, raw pain, raw memories, raw body memories, raw terror and animal/body reactions. We feel like an animal, reduced to the primalness of our body and it's ways of dealing with trauma.

Just this morning as I woke, I was reminded of my trauma, and my left arm, as it has done on many occasions before, began to spasm, to move on its own. Once when receiving a massage from a trusted massage therpist, this same arm broke away from her touch and moved away from her. (As I typed just now, "him" came out on the screen.) My left arm retains memories of trauma and reacts on it's own. But my brain is complicit. It just typed out "him" when I thought "moved away from...". Dissociation is the word that doesn't quite catch what is at work on us when these things happen.

How we work through our traumas is still somewhat a mystery to all of us. Do we come out the other end different? Certainly. Are we "healed"? That is not clear to me yet. If my body/mind/spirit has carried this for thirty years, and it can get "worse" as it has in the last two years, to this severe a level, then, I have a hard time with the thinking that "time heals all wounds." And the very definition of PTSD is that it does not.

The body, faced with trauma, breaks up the experiences into fragments and scatters them far and wide. Our minds and bodies become a minefield. It is hard to be happy living life as a walking, living, breathing minefield. I or someone else steps and an explosion occurs, seemingly at random at first, and then, a pattern tends to emerge as triggers appear with regularity. But there are still more days, more years, more mines to trod on.

And, years go by with minimal fuss, and then, as the last two stressful years have proven, times of change and stress bring on a new low with PTSD. Depths of trauma are uncovered that I thought I had scattered plenty of dirt over, such that I couldn't trigger this stuff. Not so. You can always trigger it under enough pressure.

Talking about our PTSD and trauma, drawing it, singing it, dancing it, playing it, moving with it, writing about it, whatever. It's the same, because what you are doing is bringing the raw into the symbolic, human-made, creative part of our brain and thinking. Once there, it's our clay to mold into something else. That something else is where we start to think we control "it" instead of the other way around. This is necessary to feel we can survive it. We can use labels and label the emotions and flashback moments. We begin to make sense of it to ourselves and our friends.

The nightmare I woke from when I first discovered my PTSD was silly: I woke up in a sweat trying to drive a cardbaord "car" with levers and pedals and dials at radom and which didn't work as they should. There were too many of them, and they were located right where they need not be. Some of them worked as I randomed tried them in fear and desperation. I was driving, that much was certain, but some of the gear sticks broke off in my hands. No fear, there were more all over the place, too many to deal with anyway.

This is what it feels like to grow up with PTSD. You either kill yourself or get accustomed to operating a life that makes no sense and feels overwhelming at times; we have to make some sense of the chaos. This is still within our power. We have to take control even during dissociation and flashbacks. It doesn't cure us, but we learn to drive this way. Ironically, we may master it such that we appear to be fine or even super high functioning to the outside world, who have no idea what we are suffering daily. Even so, we can, with effort, get through the bulk of it with support from trusted friends, and become proud of ourselves for it. We can make a life out of this.
 
And, years go by with minimal fuss, and then, as the last two stressful years have proven, times of change and stress bring on a new low with PTSD. Depths of trauma are uncovered that I thought I had scattered plenty of dirt over, such that I couldn't trigger this stuff. Not so. You can always trigger it under enough pressure...

Are we "healed"? That is not clear to me yet. If my body/mind/spirit has carried this for thirty years, and it can get "worse" as it has in the last two years, to this severe a level, then, I have a hard time with the thinking that "time heals all wounds." And the very definition of PTSD is that it does not.

I'm sorry this has happened. I think it can only be triggered if it's still unresolved, if we feel we can only cover it and always have to control it because to some extent it's still there. And my personal view is that it's triggered in order to be resolved at a deeper level than before. I don't think this is to do with how much time has elapsed, but with what our subconscious mind is gauging we can deal with at that point (even if we don't feel convinced we can deal with it).

I know it can feel like the worst time to have to deal with something, but I don't think it's because we can never be free of it. I think it's the opposite - our minds are still trying to process it and heal. They're not giving up on healing.

Talking about our PTSD and trauma, drawing it, singing it, dancing it, playing it, moving with it, writing about it, whatever. It's the same...

I have to say I don't think it is the same. I'm a bit confused because this doesn't seem to be quite in line with what you say about talking earlier - unless here you mean specifically talking with someone close to you rather than a therapist. (I have to say I don't understand that concept at all. I can't imagine anyone close to me being able to listen to it.)

From my personal experience, talking about it in any literal way is quite different from using art, metaphor, visualisation and other imagery. There's a scientific explanation for it, too. I don't think in scientific terms, and what matters to me is what I experience rather than research studies, but since this thread is about science and research I'll attempt (rather unintelligently - sorry) to paraphrase Belleruth Naparstek ("Invisible Heroes") who has written about this.

She cites research that the traumatised brain is focussed away from language and fixed on non-verbal danger cues such as movements. Interventions based on talking, cognition and problem solving, which are aimed at higher cortical functions, can't sufficiently impact terror-driven responses. People with PTSD experience exaggerated sensitivity and heightened activity in the parts of the brain that process emotions, sensations and images. So it's more effective and less potentially damaging to communicate and process using imagery and perception for some time, until the amygdala and surrounding neural nework have calmed down enough to allow higher brain functions like talking about, conceptualising, contextualising and integrating the traumatic experiences. Focussing first and foremost on talking/cognition is inadequate and can be retraumatising. Hence the burnout.

Unfortunately, I don't like Naparstek's own guided imagery at all. But using guided imagery to calm and eliminate symptoms, using art to symbolise and communicate the trauma before I can begin to put it into words and process it cognitively, are the kinds of things that work for me. A change takes place, on a deep level. I'm not left believing that I'm only managing something that's still there. For example, however distressing the remaining work I'm doing in therapy is, I know I won't ever have another flashback or nightmare. It's still not easy to do trauma work - it's grim - and it's not a quick fix, but I don't think PTSD is a life sentence.

I feel really sad that so few people seem to know about or give credence to the importance of working with imagery. Perhaps according to other people's viewpoints there isn't enough research of the right type, so they don't include it in their toolkit (as a therapist or as a sufferer). But as someone who uses this type of approach and doesn't believe I have to live with PTSD forever, and nor does my psychotherapist, I'm sad to see it said so often that people who've experienced PTSD will always have to control it, and that the symptoms might come back at any time for the rest of their life. I think this is the case only if therapy is geared to this, which in many cases it seems to be.

Edited to add: I should say that somatic therapy has also been essential for me. Not EMDR, if that's classed as somatic, but the type that works with your central nervous system and facilitates the release of trauma energy held in the cells.

I know what a lot of research says about there being no "cure". (I wouldn't call it a cure, but healing - including no more symptoms.) But research and prevailing opinion always change over time. Look at how ideas about best practice have changed since PTSD was first identified in the early 20th century. It also depends on what's being funded and researched. The approaches which are the focus of the majority of research are rarely the only ones, just the ones that are being researched more.

Someone wrote that definition of PTSD. They wrote a different one before, and they'll write a different one at some point in the future. Labels are helpful up to a point, but not when they limit us unnecessarily.
 
Muse, is this what you're saying, that we have to 'create', or associate, a dialogue as per trauma(tic events), which currently have none?

And therefore, speaking with a friend, because of trust or emotion it accesses parts of the right side of the brain, or links emotion to the things we speak of, vs just verbally telling a stranger. Because if it's stored in a non-verbal area, it won't come out in words, anyway. Or needs to get replayed (re-encoded) with words. Like looking up a file based on the color of a tab, not a title, and then adding words and meaning to the pictures...?
 
The Polyvagal theory has been around since the late 1990's but increasingly research is refuting the importance of it. fMRI studies looking at speaking tasks in autistic patients shows several dysfunctional systems at work whereas in PTSD Broca's motor area literally shuts down when PTSD patients try to talk about their trauma. PTSD patients can talk about other things without any problems in their neural networks whereas Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have a variety of problems. ASD patient can be loquacious in certain areas while other ASD patients might be totally mute. (Most are in between.)

Studies performed placing Vagus Nerve Stimulators (VNS) into patients with epilepsy were divided into those with ASD and those without. While VNS do help immensely with uncontrolled epilepsy, they did not show significant help with communication issues in ASD patients. [VNS, like Deep Brain Stimulation, has been thrown at a variety of mental/neurologic issues in hopes that something works.]

Infants born before 37 weeks have vagus nerve issues regarding breathing and heart function. Likewise, infants born before 37 weeks are more likely to have autism. However, maternal fever and maternal obesity are risk factos for both preterm labor and autism.

The unmyelinated portion of the vagus nerve primarily affects things below the diaphragm - the gut, bladder, uterus. These fibers are present in amphibians, reptiles, cartilagenous fish like sharks and rays - they are hold-overs of evolution. (God adds but he doesn't take away.) The myelinated portion of the vagus is present in mammals. And while we think of vagus function as part of the autonomic nervous system (automatic and out of our control) - the truth is that people can control certain aspects of it. Yogi-masters for instance can control their heart rates, making them fall into the 20s and 30s without passing out. The cortex (thinking brain) absolutely has input on the limbic system and vice-versa.

Consequently, I do not think that the vagus nerve is the key to curing or fixing our PTSD, although I do think that eventually the common thread of these disparate parts of our neuroanatomy that dysfunction will be united and help us all.

I do think the vagus nerve may be why yoga is proving to be helpful in a variety of mental health issues. Yoga teaches us breath control, being in the moment with our body, and gaining mastery of our movements. Yoga puts us in control of our physical body which I don't think many of us "know". We tend to think of the world using us, damaging us, shoving us around. Yoga teaches the opposite.
 
My deep thanks to the three of you who responded to my rambling post. I thank you for your questions also; I will try to speak to those first and stay as focused as I can.

Junebug and Hashi mentioned the difference I placed on talk therapy and communication with an intimate regarding the integration of the trauma into "something else" symbollically.

I should try to explain what I meant. I have had a number of triggered PTSD symptoms. I tend to "forget" them, that is to say, they seem to be "state-dependent" in memory. Therefore, I will not be able to mention them in therapy. If I try to journal them, as Hashi stated, it really cannot be done. As Girl3 stated, verballizing seems shut off as a means of conveyance of meaning of the experiences, whatever you want to label them. I will call them flashbacks.

I got interupted. I will try to finish later.
 
Oh dear Muse, I know exactly what you mean, I have state-dependent memory recall, definitely absolutely completely. (That are not "FB's", proper, though).

I see maybe where you are headed towards- the ability to have enough safety or trust it emerges, if they do there is recall and words of the past (event), I can remember it clearly and identify how I felt (usually equate it to the same feelings I am having in the present due to a different, current event). (I can work backwards, say "well I feel now 'terror, grief' (etc), guess I felt then as I do now".) I swear I will never forget, but afterwards I cannot remember the memory, yet it was so clear!

I'll stop now, don't want to presume or hijack your thread.

Thank you! :hug:
 
Thanks, Junebug, I think you are reading me. ;)

I'm taking some of my follow up from the Article: [DLMURL]http://www.primarypsychiatry.com/aspx/articledetail.aspx?articleid=3572[/DLMURL]
Conceptualizing Treatment Nonadherence in Patients with Bipolar Disorder and PTSD by Jeffrey J. Rakofsky, MD, Steven T. Levy, MD, and Boadie W. Dunlop, MD
 
Thank you Muse, must head to work but I will come back to read.

Maybe it doesn't touch on this at all, but it got me thinking, maybe that is sort of like revisiting the original event- because in that way it is like a FB, because it is more like 'reliving', when such memories surface- but this time with an ally, a witness, safety, help. And then perhaps words (and emotions) can be (re)written to it. But this time with safety, etc. - a different 'feeling'.

Perhaps a sign of progress there might be that eventually (then) those memories become 'true' memories- not state-dependent (because they're no longer as horrific, terrifying, etc.)?

That would be, kind of like a mini-chance to rewrite history. :)

((((((((((Big Hugs))))) :hug: .
 
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